They enjoyed playing with her. Yuriko chanted the declaration in her head like a mantra everyday when they changed the bags of nutrient fluid that sustained her. The young interns occasionally brought in laughably insignificant, tasteless rations of solid food, as though they were doing her a favor. Her organs “ or what passed for them “ had long healed from the damage inflicted by the adamantium clot lodged in her abdomen. Stryker and his favorite pet, Doctor Cornelius, were taking their sweet time reconfiguring her neural net and recharging the nannites fortifying her circulatory system and higher brain functions.
They’d forgotten about the woman inside the machine. Machines couldn’t express rage. Machines had no soul.
But they could be programmed to kill. That was all Stryker wanted when he’d “drafted” the Wolverine into the Program, a killing machine. Rather than scrap the program that left a few dozen Program operatives and technicians dead and Cornelius grievously wounded, they decided to create a new weapon using “recycled parts,” namely the unwanted female heir to Lord Darkwind’s technological empire. Girls were useless; her status as a mutant made her undesirable, a liability to her family name and dynasty. Stryker, the Oyama family’s trusted tutor and colleague, was the natural choice named as executor of the estates and Oyama Heavy Industries, the leader in the cybernetic field.
She’d already known shame and was no stranger to rejection. Thanks to her tutor’s persuasive methods, she knew pain. The drugs had kept her docile and malleable. The nannites bolstered her natural healing factor, repairing near-fatal damage three times faster than her own body would allow. From the first moment that the cybernetics were grafted to her body and the adamantium burned its way into her veins, setting her nerve endings on fire, she knew rage.
That rage had found a target in the retired Army sergeant constantly spouting scriptures and dosing her with the strength-enhancing, mind-altering narcotics.
And here he comes…
“Good morning, Yuriko,” he called out cheerfully, his heavy footsteps preceded by the squeal of the steel hinges of her chamber door. The room was a box, undecorated save for the tiny blue glass of daisies that one of the female technicians sympathetically believed would “brighten things up a bit.” She vowed that her death would be quicker than the rest, as a courtesy.
She remained silent; bitterly she remembered that was how he preferred her during their tutoring sessions. Be seen, not heard. But it was the nature of the predator to never been seen, nor heard. The thought of ripping his still-beating heart from his chest and showing it to him brought the tiniest quirk of a smile to her lips.
His back was turned as he took off his wool peacoat and hung it on the hook. Briefly, she tested the strength of the steel cuffs securing her to the bed. She felt the faintest hint of give.
Stryker approached the bed, his glance appraising and clinical. “Your color’s looking better today.” He flipped up the hospital gown hem and studied the long, slender scar that trailed from her rib cage all the way to her navel. “Beautiful,” he mused. “You’re a marvel of science, Yuriko. You get gutted, pumped full of adamantium, and practically carve yourself open like a Christmas turkey, and there’s hardly a mark on you.” Amusement colored his tone, but his smile was still measured and chilly. “Don’t get too comfortable. This afternoon we’ll be making a trip to the sub-basement to adjust your neural net and connect you to the mainframe. Cornelius kindly installed some new failsafes and combat protocols, as well as a new GPS system, so you’ll never venture off the grid, no matter where we assign you. Isn’t that nice?” he drawled.
She’d show him nice. Sugar and spice, that’s what little girls were made of.
As soon as he left, pleading other obligations needing his attention, Jason touched her mind again, as if to ask “Is he gone?” Yuriko smiled, looking almost beautiful again.
Soon, she told him. Very soon.
Sub-basement level, Oyama Heavy Industries:
“I think our girl could use a change of scenery,” Cornelius murmured. “She’s a little restless today.” Within the confines of a glassed-in observation suite, the red-haired occupant focused on something small and insignificant in the corner of the room. More of Cornelius’ beloved classical music flooded the room at low volume as she reeled mutely from the last dosage of psychotropics. Her nape still stung from the searing absorption of the fast-acting narcotic. She swayed slightly, whether it was to the music or caused by some vision in her mind, Stryker couldn’t tell.
“When will she be ready?”
“That depends on our girl here. Here are the results of the last few sessions with her memory recall, psych interviews with the interns and techs, and we’ve already started running tests. It’s been promising so far.”
“Is she…still one of them?” Stryker asked, almost dreading the answer. They were so close. Cornelius sighed and scratched his scarred scalp.
“…yes. She is. We don’t know the extent of her power, whether the telekinesis can still be accessed, or if the genetic duplication of those neural cells caused any damage. We need to be sure. These things can’t be rushed.”
“I need her, Cornelius!”
“I know, Sergeant. But I need to run some more tests.”
“What are you looking for?”
“The duplication process was a success. In all the ways that matter, she’s Jean Grey. Her own momma wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But for what you need her for, we need to dig a little deeper. See if she has all of her memories. Instincts. Loves. Relationships.” Stryker shot him a look that told him he wasn’t buying it. “Every tool has an ‘on’ switch, Sergeant. We need to make sure hers still works. It’s a delicate process.” Stryker strode back to the chest of drawers and dove back into the one he wanted, withdrawing the slender plastic sheath.
“All you need to do is turn it on, Doctor,” he grumbled. Without further preamble, he overrode the security protocol and unlocked the chamber door. Cornelius hung back and waited, watching him with trepidation.
“Jean?”
“Hmm?” She quirked a slender, arched eyebrow at him and smiled beneficently, reminding Stryker of Botticelli’s auburn-curled beauties that his wife used to love so much whenever she dragged him to any of the museums at Golden Gate Park for the afternoon.
“I’ve got something for you, sweetheart. A present.”
“For me?” She looked at him quizzically.
“You’ll like this.” He reached into the plastic sleeve and withdrew the engagement ring, still slightly tarnished, then held it out to her. The dim light of the chamber was still enough to heighten the beauty of the stone, throwing tiny prisms across his fingers as he brandished it in front of her.
“That’s mine,” she breathed. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes it is,” he agreed. “Take it. Try it on.” She never hesitated, but her fingers trembled slightly as she plucked it from his thickened fingers. She peered at it from different angles, and her brow furrowed slightly as she read the inscription, mouthing the words silently before she slid it onto her left ring finger.
“Scott,” she murmured. She looked at Stryker with a million questions. “I know him. He’s…he’s important. Special to me.” She gazed down at the ring again. “He loves me,” she pronounced.
“Of course he does. Who wouldn’t?” His tone was cajoling and light.
“He’s very special,” she repeated. Her green eyes narrowed slightly as she continued to focus on the ring.
Before his very eyes, the ring glowed and gleamed as minute particles of tarnish and mildew began to float off the ring; the metal was fortified and polished, nearly good as new as she turned her hand this way and that, nodding when she was satisfied.
“So are you, Miss Grey.”
Back at Westchester:
“How d’you sleep with those things, War?” Jubilee asked her winged classmate around a mouthful of pancake.
“Dunno. I just…sleep, I guess,” he admitted, ruffling his feathers as he considered the question. He watched Jubilee over the rim of his orange juice glass. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, is all. They’re just so…big. And wingy,” she hedged, beginning to feel like a royal doofus for asking.
And beautiful, she silently admitted. Let’s not forget that. Majestic, snowy white and dream-inspiring, if you wanted to be totally honest, which she didn’t. The Worthington kid was too darned pretty for his own good, and for hers.
Especially since guys never liked her that way, anyway. Kitty never seemed like the kinda girl guys would go nuts for, in Jubi’s opinion, but she had Bobby and Peter drooling over her when they thought no one was looking. Sure, she was smart, cute, funny, could dance…never mind. She WAS the kind of girl guys went nuts for.
It wasn’t like she was a total hag, or anything. She’d been aces on her old gymnastics team back at central Hollywood High…at least until her power manifested, and a hail of fireworks took out that whole bank of bleachers and set everyone stampeding out of the gym. That sucked. Her parents were mortified, but she couldn’t even get upset with them for being upset with her for long. The police met her at her house one afternoon and had to cart her off, kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs once they’d delivered the blow that her parents had been killed.
Ororo talked her out of her life of casual crime when she found her at the mall after hours, about to break back inside to her hidey hole in the Macy’s bedding section. It was the closest thing she had to a roof over her head.
“You’re out past curfew, young lady.”
“I don’t have a curfew. I don’t answer to anybody. What’s it to you, Miss Busy Body?”
“The police put out an alert that they think they’ve found the individual responsible for multiple break-ins and for the damage to their security cameras. They mentioned that there was a short caused by what looked like a self-contained explosion that burned through and fried the panel.” Her brown eyes were kind. “You’re too young for jail, but they wouldn’t bat an eyelash before throwing you into juvenile hall. I don’t think you belong there.”
“Where do I belong then?”
“At a school where you can hone your gifts, and make new friends who understand what it’s like to occasionally be feared, and who were also displaced.” She smiled, lighting up a face that was already ridiculously beautiful. “Interested?”
It was kinda cool, Jubilee mused, having a teacher who used to be a thief, and who was also an orphan. Dani was a cool roomie, too, even if she did occasionally pull nightmares out of her head in the middle of the night after they’d all watched too many horror movies; she’d already vowed never to watch The Ring again after dark.
“Wingy?” Warren grinned.
“Well, for lack of a better word, dude. What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“When you…you know. Had ‘the Big Change.’ Did you just wake up one day looking like the tails side of a quarter?” She covered the awkwardness with sarcasm, her usual safety net.
“Gee, thanks! And no. Maybe things would have been different…maybe I would’ve had a life outside of the house for a little while longer.”
“What happened?” She paused in drenching her remaining pancakes with maple syrup, swiping her fingertip across the spout and licking off the last gooey drop thoughtfully. The gesture distracted him for a moment; she had a really, really pretty little mouth, he realized. She just…ran it so frequently. Jubi was a total chatterbox, and he never had a clue what she’d bust loose with next.
“I mutated early,” he explained, “and it wasn’t the easiest thing to explain to a school nurse, why I had to wear a big heavy jacket even in spring. She homeschooled me. No more play dates, no more sports, nada. Sucked,” he admitted.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That would. I’m kinda hyper, I need time out of the house. I get too restless when I’m cooped up.”
“No, really?” He feigned surprise, and she thumbed her nose at him from across the table. “You, HYPER?” But he could relate to the “cooped up” part pretty well.
“Whaddever. My mom used to say it was just a phase.” She tucked back into her pancakes. “She was always trying to limit my sugar. Don’t know why.” For a petite girl, she had the appetite of a truck driver, he marveled. He respected that. Her metabolism was almost as fast as his, since she never gained an ounce. Like Kitty, she was one of the only kids in the school who could handle Kurt’s old jungle gym obstacle course in the Danger Room, flying through the various hoops and over the oddly angled bars, light as a feather. She was fun to watch.
He’d found himself watching her more often, lately.
“See ya, Jubes.”
“Later, War,” she mumbled before taking a long swig of her milk. She wiped the mustache off her lip and waved to him, then craned her head to watch him stride down the hall. Dang, he was easy on the eyes.
Downstairs in the Danger Room, Scott and Ororo ran him through another series of exercises prescribed by Scott’s physical therapist. She spotted him on the lateral pull, standing behind him and resting her hands on the bar as she encouraged him to try one more.
“Nice work, Scott, that’s it, breathe through it…” Out of long habit, she breathed out with him, even though he was doing all the work. He grunted and gave the bar one last clean jerk before she helped him to release it slowly and evenly. She backed away to let him stretch and get his bearings, tossing him a small white towel.
“Thanks. Whoo! It’s not supposed to be this hard,” he groused. “It’s like I haven’t worked out in months!”
“You haven’t. Not this you, anyway,” she pointed out.
“I’m not any different,” he muttered. “Same old me, Ororo.”
“I’m a bad judge of that, I guess. I’ve never seen your eyes up until now, you realize that, don’t you?” She tugged the towel from his hands and rubbed his sweaty hair dry.
“Ouch! Smarts! Gimme that!” He stole the towel back and gave her a playful shove. “It’s still weird,” he murmured. “Seeing things this way. Everything looks too close. Hank told me it’s just my spatial awareness coming back into whack, or something along that line. His explanation was much more cerebral than that, but it’s different seeing everything without a constant red haze, and less magnified than I remember. And things don’t pulse anymore.”
“They don’t…pulse?”
“Yeah. It was this little flicker that I used to see around anything that used or threw off energy. Like Cerebro,” he tossed out. “Or the Blackbird, lasers, blasters, you name it. I don’t know if that was tied into my power itself, or it was the goggles.”
“Got me,” she shrugged. “Scott, do you miss what you could do?”
“I feel like I should,” he admitted, “but no. Not one damn bit. It’s just…nice. I can look at myself in the mirror and see the real me when I wake up in the morning. I’m actually in control. No kooky red glasses that make people sidestep me in the subway.”
“That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. People on subways make me uncomfortable,” she tsked.
“The whole experience of riding one in the first place creeps you out, ‘Ro, don’t blame it on the people.” He recanted a moment later. “I take that back. This is New York. Wanna borrow my goggles?”
“Next time I go into town,” she jibed. “How are you feeling today, Scott?”
“Stiff. Tired. Can’t sleep lately.”
“Let me suit up; I’ll meet you in the steam room.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
An hour later, Ororo was standing over Scott, leaning over his prone form and massaging the knots out of his lower back with her knuckles, evoking groans that she claimed “sound like a bull moose during mating season.”
“That’s it. I’m done, stick a fork in me. That felt sooooooooo goooooooood,” he mumbled. His muscles were limp putty in her hands as she kneaded out the last of the tension in his neck.
“My pleasure. You know I’m only gonna work you that much harder tomorrow.”
“Slave driver,” he pouted.
“It’s a dirty job,” she quipped.
“You’re enjoying it too much.”
“I am, actually. I’m just getting you back for riding my butt back when I first came to the school. You’re such a Boy Scout!”
“Am not,” he griped.
“Are too.”
“Not.”
“Too. And you’ll give me the last word, or I quit rubbing and leave you a quivering heap.”
“You’re mean.”
“It’s a dirty job,” she repeated.
That’s how Logan found them as he made his way out of the locker room to steal a much needed steam bath that his muscles were screaming for after his long ride. Ororo was wearing a tiny black bikini that he was certain was illegal in at least twelve states and had a tiny gym towel slung around her hips. Her caramel skin was flushed with color from the steam room and was glowing with good health, adding to her earthy, sexy appeal. His gut did a funny little twist when he saw “ and heard “ Scott moaning and groaning beneath her touch, sounding like a guy who’d just busted a nut. His eyes were closed, but his face was relaxed and smeared with bliss.
That was his bliss, damn it. He fought the urge to run over and knock Scooter off the massage table and claim it was an accident. Oops, my elbow slipped, my bad, see? Didn’t even leave a mark…
Her smile was peaceful and full of satisfaction as she effleuraged his deltoids and shoulder blades in long sweeping strokes. Her slender hands were skilled and handled him knowingly, like she had done this before. That sent all the wrong images into his head and made him want to tear someone’s head off.
Scott picked that moment to open one sleepy eye and wave limply to him. “Hey, Logan.”
“Scooter. Storm.” He rubbed the back of his neck, ruffling the back of his already tousled hair. Ororo looked up at him like nothing untoward was going on, looking nothing like a little girl who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She just smiled at him more broadly, as though it was an everyday occurrence for her to oil Summers down and massage him into an unintelligible, groaning puddle.
“When did you get back?”
“Little while ago. Am I interruptin’ anything?” He cocked his brow. She met it with a delicate quirk of her own.
“Not at all. I’m just rubbing out a few kinks. Scott here worked hard, and deserved a little reward.”
“If I’m really good I get a belly rub and a dog biscuit after this,” Scott drawled. “Mmmmmm.” He telegraphed how good Ororo’s hands felt as she ran her fingertips over the tendons behind his ears and exerted gentle pressure.
“Ain’t this cozy,” he growled. “Steam room. I’m headed into the steam room. Already told Pete and Blue that I’m back.” He turned his back on the pair and stomped into the wet sauna, plotting Scott’s death and how to make it look like an acc…oh, fuck it all. He was a trained assassin. Wasn’t like they’d suspect anyone else, and he had plenty of motive.
The hissing from multiple jets echoed off the fogged privacy glass walls as Logan slipped off his tank top and chucked it onto the tile floor. The steam filled his lungs, helping him couch up acres of dust and Lord knew what else that he’d inhaled on his trip home. His thighs screamed in protest when he parked the bike in the garage and climbed the stairs to his room to check his messages. His knuckles still itched from the beating he’d given them slicing his way in, and then out of the dingy, moldy complex. The souped up motor on Scott’s custom bike “ scratch that, HIS bike til Scooter reclaimed it “ vibrated and thrummed through his muscles, leaving his hands pulsing all the way up to his elbows.
A sense of possessiveness washed over him, duking it out with the raw envy when he saw Scott with Ororo, writhing beneath her touch. She radiated contentment and exuded a sensual awareness of his flesh, of what would feel good.
The tell-tale musk of Scott’s arousal hit him like a bucket of icy water. He was glad he high-tailed it out of the locker room before Scott stood up from that table, or he would have seen too much “ WAY more than he needed to.
Back in the massage suite, Ororo gave Scott’s shoulder one final pat. “Off you go,” she announced.
“This is cool. I never thought it could feel like this.”
“I’ve given you back rubs before,” she argued, wiping the residue of oil from her hands on a nearby towel. Her tone held a hint of indignance at the implication that she hadn’t relieved his basic aches and pains on various occasions after missions or workouts.
“No, not that. I mean how it feels to make the Wolverine jealous enough to take my head off. Man, what a rush!” Ororo stared at him as though he’d just farted in church. “Excuse me?” Those cobalt blue eyes twinkled with unsuppressed wickedness.
“C’mon, don’t act like you didn’t notice. The scowl, the flared nostrils, the menacing growl…it was friggin’ classic. The man was pissed off! He’s finally getting a taste of his own medicine, and I got to hold the spoon! I get a back rub from a pretty lady and a chance at revenge, all in one day.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She adjusted the towel around her hips, tightening it before she helped Scott up from the table. “It’s not like that, Summers. He doesn’t feel that way about me.” She skipped telling him that he only felt that way about one woman who would remain nameless.
“Please! He caught another guy getting cozy with his woman, it was written all over him.”
“Except that I’m not his woman. He wasn’t jealous,” she declared. “Now drop it.”
“Someone’s mighty defensive.” He waggled his eyebrows at her meaningfully. “Next time, we could let him catch you rubbing my front…?” he suggested.
“Awful. You’re incorrigible. I’m giving you another set of reps on every machine tomorrow; keep pushing me if you want two.” He sighed gustily and shook his head as he reached for his crutches.
“Sure. Logan gets you riled up, and you take it out on me. How’s that fair?”
“No less fair than you badgering me about him. There’s nothing between us.” As an afterthought, she nagged him, “And don’t bait him like that.”
“Sorry, Ororo, but it’s too damned fun.” He ambled off with strong, even thrusts of the crutches toward his locker. “Gonna hit the shower. See you at dinner, Munroe.”
“Later, Summers.” The squeak of the latex cushion pads on his crutches faded off into the background as she retrieved her bottle of massage oil and put it back in the large cabinet. She eyed a stack of snowy white shower towels and thoughtfully left one outside the men’s shower suite on the bench after she heard the spray hitting the tile, telling her Scott was already out of sight. Then she headed back to the steam room with two thick, neatly folded towels for Logan.
The steam jets had already turned themselves off with a loud thunk, and the interior of the sauna was fogged with a gray haze that she almost couldn’t see her hand through. She called out to him briefly, trying to let her eyes adjust. “Logan?” She heard the sound of someone moving on the tiled platform. “I brought you some towels,” she offered. “I’ll just set them ““ She yelped out loud in surprise when he loomed up at her from the fog and heat, manacling her wrist in a stubborn grip, and she dropped the towels, raising her hand to her chest.
“Don’t do that again,” she gasped. Her heart slammed in response to his touch.
“Sorry. Thanks.” His eyes burned into her as he got a good look at the shock flooding her face.
“I was just dropping these off.”
“Don’t run off just yet.” His eyes raked their way down her body, taking in her rosy skin, every inch of it revealed to perfection by the daring little suit. The front of the bikini was knotted shut, tempting his fingers to unwrap her goodies for closer inspection. Her abdomen was taut and firm, and her tiny waist led down to a curvy pair of hips that he’d previously only had the chance to admire in that snug leather costume, or those faded jeans that fit her like a second skin. When she wasn’t looking, he enjoyed watching her hip pockets walking away.
“I need to get back upstairs.”
“I just got here. Wouldn’t mind some company,” he rumbled, giving her wrist a little tug to make her stumble closer. Her eyes sparked with irritation.
“Thanks, but I’ve already had enough steam.”
“Bull. Those look like goosebumps, darlin’, ya look like ya could use a little more warmin’ up t’me.” Callused fingers crept up her arm, stroking the tender flesh idly, getting to know the satiny texture of her skin, which indeed was flush with a hint of gooseflesh. Her stomach quivered at the caress, and she felt her nipples stiffening traitorously into taut little buds beneath her top.
“I’m fine, Logan. Trust me.”
“I do. And ya are. Damned fine, darlin’.” He lazily skimmed his fingers over her collarbones, tracing and exploring it to memorize every slope and hollow. Her mouth went dry as she continued to stare at him. The steam slicked his flesh and left his dark hair curling in unruly waves around his temples. The fine mat of hair on his chest and forearms glistened and emphasized his bulging pectorals and washboard stomach. His entire body was a melody of rippling, springy muscle, and Ororo fought not to let her eyes linger too long. She mentally kicked herself when he caught the hunger in her gaze.
“I can’t stay. I’ve got…chores. I need to handle some paperwork.”
“Gotta hurry off, huh?” He tugged on a lock of her hair, twirling it around his finger, and he released her wrist only to snake his arm around her waist instead.
“Oh!” she gasped when he yanked her against him. His skin was hot and slippery as their bellies touched, and she felt something firm insistently nudging against the apex of her thighs. “I-I should go,” she stammered. His eyes grew hooded and flicked over her mouth.
“Ya probably should,” he agreed, “but I’m tryin’ not ta take offense at not gettin’ a proper welcome home.” Reflexively her palms found his chest, and she nearly moaned at how good he felt.
“It’s good to have you back.” What stunned her was the admission that it really was.
“Thanks. Nice ta be back. But talk’s cheap, ‘Roro.” He was almost playful as he rubbed the tip of her nose with his, just a fleeting touch, and just close enough to tickle her lips with his breath. “Show me,” he demanded. He clutched more of her hair, raking his fingers through the silky mass and skimming the backs of his fingers down her jaw.
“Show you what?” she whispered, locked in his gaze.
“That yer happy ta see me,” he confirmed. “Don’t leave a man guessing,” he growled, crushing her mouth with hers, stealing the taste that he craved. Her strangled moan against his lips enflamed him, and he slanted his mouth over hers again and again, feeling triumphant when her arms wrapped around his neck. She couldn’t get enough of the feel of him; desire raced through her veins as his fingers stroked their way down her back before cupping the rounded globes of her bottom. Another growl against her lips told her that he liked what he found. He dragged the towel from her hips and let it drop silently to the floor, giving his hands better access to roam her body’s treasures and delights.
“Logan!” Whose voice was that, sounding so breathy, ragged and desperate? her mind demanded.
“Missed you,” he grated out, nipping her sensitive earlobe between his teeth. She ground her body wantonly against his hardness in agreement and nodded, leaning her head back to better allow him to devour her neck. A groan escaped him as her own hands kneaded the tension out of his shoulders, easing the discomforts of his trip home.
“Then stop going away,” she suggested. “I was right here. You knew where to find me.” She pulled back, cupping his jaw between her palms. “All you left me was a note.”
“Thought it’d help,” he confessed weakly.
“It didn’t. I went a little crazy when Hank said that the bike was gone. You worried the crap out of me. Don’t do that again.” He ducked his chin to nibble her palm and taste her pulse.
“Can’t promise anything, darlin’,” he admitted.
“Try.” She did her best imitation of his growl; he was impressed.
“Ya knew I’d come back.” His eyes were dark and rich with promises of sin and a reminder of the kiss they’d shared in the infirmary. He kissed her again, tugging on her lip and sucking it greedily.
“So that meant it was okay to leave?” His cocky tone chafed her; that was the only thing stopping her from ripping his boxers off of him and taking him on the tile.
“Had to.” This time he averted his eyes, and Ororo calmly removed herself from his grip.
“Because of what happened with Scott?”
“That was only part of it. There were a few things I never got around to back at Alkali before we got Scooter back.” And he wouldn’t have done things over for a second; bringing them back to the mansion and making sure Ororo was safe and sound took precedence over everything else.
“You can’t keep haring off,” she sighed. “We need you. But if we have to learn how to get along without you whenever you get itchy feet, Logan, then we’ll just have to muddle through.”
“Ya know it wasn’t like that,” he grumbled, scowling. Her eyes flashed at him briefly, and he could smell the shift in her body chemistry and posture. Those slender arms crossed themselves under her chest. Yup, she was ticked again. “I had ta get back inside the compound. Too much of my past is locked up in that place, Ororo. And I know Stryker was there.”
“It’s impossible. There was no way he could have gotten loose.”
“That’s what he was happy enough ta let us believe. He came after me, and brought this mess ta our front door, Ororo, and tried ta hurt the kids. He’s out there, he ain’t finished with us, and I don’t want that bastard hittin’ us where we live again. Never again.” His tone hardened with his last words. He bent down and handed her back her discarded towel. Their fingers brushed as she took it, and she felt the same tingle run up her arm, but forced her feelings back down and clamped the lid tight.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“I told you back at the lake that I felt Jean inside me.” She wrapped the towel around her torso this time, covering herself to shield her bounty as she dropped the sixty-four dollar question. “Did you go back there to find signs of Stryker, or to bring her back?”
“I don’t hafta answer that.” He straightened up, stiff as a poker before he grabbed one of the towels she brought inside and wrapped it around his neck. The last of their tentative connection dissolved.
“I think you just did.” She spun on her heel and strode out of the sauna, letting the door swish shut behind her.
“Aw, hell,” he grumbled.
Thankfully, Scooter had already headed upstairs by the time he dragged himself into the shower stall, dashing himself with the cold spray to rid himself of the lingering effects of Ororo’s sweet body pressed against his.
Oyama Heavy Industries:
The klaxons rang out, filling the steel corridors of the sub-basement with their droning clamor as Yuriko strode confidently through the unit, her arm occasionally flying out, gouging through flesh and bone as the technicians made their futile attempts to stop her. The first one to die had been the most satisfying, his look of shock almost hilarious when he realized that her wrist was no longer securely bound by the manacles in the wall. She dangled the cuff from her clawed fingertips before slashing him through the jugular. Blood and gore sprayed from the wound, and she stepped over his twitching, gurgling bulk as she casually kicked the door off its hinges.
It felt so good to break something. And it was time to stretch her legs. She paused by the still-warm corpse of the kindly intern who made a gift of the limp daisies in her cubicle and quickly stripped her of her standard issue khaki uniform, callously leaving her face down as she continued toward the special room with palm identification security locks.
She lengthened her claws into pincer-like skewers and plunged them into the panel, shorting it out. The shower of sparks it emitted was almost pretty, she grinned to herself.
Ahhh, Doctor Cornelius…
He had the nerve to look shocked. “Yuriko…you shouldn’t be down here…”
“My family name’s on the sign outside, your salary is paid from my late father’s coffers,” she offered coolly, “and it’s Lady Yuriko, Doctor. You forget yourself.” Futilely he darted and ducked, throwing rolling chairs in her path as he stumbled into the observation cubicle, cursing Stryker as he fled.
He left him there, a sitting duck once the alert had been sent out from the top floor that she’d broken loose. There was only static when he attempted to use the intercom and radio the sentries. His pulse was uneven, throbbing in his neck, and a cold sweat broke out over his scarred flesh.
“Don’t,” he warned, brandishing a gun. She just smiled.
“Don’t what?” she purred cheerfully. Her eyes were obsidian chips, no longer the eerie, glowing blue indicating that her nannites and neural net were in sync with the mainframe at the complex, set to Stryker’s usual command protocols.
“We made you. We gave you a life.” Well, now he was just talking himself into a corner. “Your father said you wouldn’t suit his purposes! Look at what you’ve become! Think of what you could yet be!”
“Machines don’t have life,” she corrected him, tutting slightly.
“No. You’re unique. Precision technology. State of the art nannites. Self-repairing. The ultimate weapon.” He recited almost word for word his own notes from her original file when they’d begun the project, following on the heels of the Wolverine’s “hasty departure” from Alkali. “Beautiful,” he breathed. If he could just keep her listening…
She flicked her claws casually, letting the light glint off the liquid metal. “I’m not human anymore. Not really. That didn’t matter to you when my father revealed my mutation. I became a commodity. A donor for your little experiments,” she shrugged. “What do you think of your little lab rat now?”
“Lady Yuriko,” he whimpered, then he broke away a millisecond before she could lung for him, shoving himself backward into the tiny, nearly airless bunker. He kicked it shut and engaged the locks, diving for the drawer where he kept his stun blaster and a supply of sedative darts for instances such as these. He expected the door to implode any moment, or at the very least to hear her banging away at it. It was reinforced steel, nearly a foot thick, built like a vault.
He was awed when he heard his favorite Rachmaninoff symphony being piped into the observation suite. More sweat broke out on his forehead, dripping into his eyes as he loaded the blaster with a cartridge and prepared the sedative darts. He leaned his back against the door, pressing his entire weight against it for good measure. He knew it was a lost cause, but even if he could buy himself some time…destroy the files…clean the database to leave a cold trail…
He waited. Listened for her foot steps. The music tortured him for a few minutes, taking him back to simpler times, when he was a fledgling researcher with a passion for genetic codes and manipulation of the amazing new alloy patented by Darkwind’s colleagues. Landing the job had been a feather in his cap “
A shiver ran down his spine, making his heart slam in his chest as he heard her lilting hum. She was truly a diplomat’s daughter; she picked up the melody and maintained perfect pitch. She reached the crescendo, and he heard the sickening, twisting crunch of metal impaling flesh. She wiggled her claws, twisting them in his chest cavity.
He grunted in shock as she extracted his heart and yanked it out of his back. His eyes rolled up as if looking toward heaven, then saw nothing. He slumped to the floor, bathing it in a rapidly spreading pool of gore.
He never heard the fading symphony, or her bemused observation made from the other side of the punctured door.
“It’s bigger than I thought.” The useless organ hit the floor with a splat.
She continued to hum the symphony on her way out of the suite, shucking the offending hospital gown after she used it to wipe the blood from her hands. She retrieved the uniform and hopped into it, then began her search for Jason’s suite. To her delight, he reached out to her, sending her a visual guide to his location and confirming that yes, his father had fled the complex with his pretty new charge. His next question twisted her lips into a smile. Do you want me to play with them?
Yes.
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